Four-Wheeled Future: Just How Fast Should a $1 Million “Hypercar” Go?

Last month, we told you all about the Ferrari LaFerrari, the fabled brand’s latest entry into what has colloquially become known as the “hypercar” market. This moniker was invented recently, like so many terms from the current Gilded Age, in order to describe a category of products that transcend our notions of exuberant abundance. In this case, it references ultra-exclusive, ultra-fast vehicles that use a combination of advanced construction materials (such as composites, carbon ceramics, and carbon fiber) to reduce weight and new technology (hybrid componentry, sophisticated engine massaging, and magic) to increase power, acceleration, and top speed.

Since cars like these cost in the neighborhood of $1 million—or $1.5 million, or $3.9 million, or whatever—it seems challenging to imagine that more than a handful of them could exist. But it turns out that they’re a growing segment. There is the aforementioned Ferrari. There is the slinky and heritage-harkening Porsche 918, which slightly resembles its winning 1970s 917 racecar. There’s the super-limited-edition (meaning only three cars total) Veneno from Lamborghini, a successor to the Aventador J that looks fabulously similar to something your 11-year-old self misassembled from a giant Battlestar Galactica Lego set and then put in the microwave for 40 minutes. And there’s the McLaren P1, which follows in the tire tracks of McLaren’s three-seated F1 supercar of the 90s and resembles a jaundiced human nose riding a skateboard.

In the era of $214 million apartments, such vehicles seem nearly contextualized, if not a relative bargain. (You could even live in one, though your chiropractor bills might increase.) But they’re still cars: four wheels, shiny paint. The Ferrari even does away with niceties like power seats in order to save weight. So what makes them so expensive?

Well, exclusivity, for one. Each one of these vehicles will have global lifelong production numbers that will start in the single digits and stop in the mid-hundreds. (Compare this to, say, the Toyota Corolla, of which nearly 3,000 are sold globally every day.) Some of the cost is derived from the ultra-advanced technology that underpins these cars, much of which comes directly from the world of Formula One racing, where a steering wheel alone can cost $50,000. Then, of course, there’s the economy of oligarchy in which we live, where billionaires have outrageous sums of money to spend on consumer goods that no one else can or should be able to afford, and car companies are more than happy to siphon up with splurge-worthy expenditures.

This last bit obviates the natural follow-up question: Are these cars worth it? But it also prompts the follow-follow-up question: With cars that make as much power as a Shanxi coal mine, accelerate into extra-legality quicker than a former child star on probation, and stick to the road like . . . a stick that just fell onto the road, where do we go from here?

Maybe every generation thinks it can’t go any faster—rolling down a hill in a shitty wooden wagon must have felt like peak speed in the 14th century—but if these cars can already get to 60 miles per hour in just over two seconds and can reach well over 200 m.p.h., is it physically possible, or advisable, to improve?

“Speed alone isn’t much of a thrill,” Sam Smith, executive editor of Road & Track told us, undermining our assumptions about both science and joy, “at least not without emotion, or context, or some sense that you’re in control. So I suspect hypercars won’t get much faster, but they will get lighter, more involving, and more practical.”

We like all those descriptors, except for “won’t get much faster.” But given the fact that electric batteries—which the new Ferrari, Porsche, and McLaren hypercars all have—increase weight and complexity, somewhat diminish one’s ability to connect with the car in any mechanical way, and take up useful space, why are they all including them?

“It’s fashionable,” Smith explained. “Hypercar-makers focus on what their customers want, and when it comes to gadgets and toys—and a hypercar is basically the equivalent of a seven-figure iPod—wealthy people are no different from anyone else: they seek out the newest, the coolest, the most interesting. When you’re selling 200 m.p.h. cars to the private-jet set, fuel economy isn’t as strong a sales tool as novelty and fashion.”

Never afraid to be unfashionable in the most thrillingly immoderate ways, the only one of these automakers not currently worshiping at the altar of the lithium-ion battery is Lamborghini. But this could change. “Regarding electric propulsion in future Lamborghinis, never say ‘never,’” impeccable Lamborghini president and C.E.O. Stephan Winkelmann told us. Although with respect to a hybrid Lambo, Winkelmann claimed this would most likely come “in the form of our proposed S.U.V., previewed successfully last year with the Urus concept,” rather than in a hypercar.

In the meantime, click through our hypercar slide show to learn everything you need to know about the subject. And then prepare to submit (your down payment).